Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

By Mariko Lamb-Talk Radio News Service

A number of Democratic Senators said during a press conference Wednesday that the Senate Finance Committee will have a bipartisan health care bill passed by the end of this year, but accused Republicans and health insurance companies of hindering the bill's progress.

“Republicans’ role in this is all about ‘slow down, stop, and no’... that’s what the Republican leadership has been all about,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

Republicans are implementing their “irresolution resolution,” said fellow HELP Committee member Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). “Despite all the stories of real Americans: their heartache, their frustration, their anger, ultimately even their disgust with the health care system they're trapped in, [Republicans continue to] turn the most desperate domestic policy crisis in our country into political theater.”

In response to recent town hall protests against health care reform, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (W.V) said these protests disrupt the message. “The story becomes the disruption, not the message,” he said. “We’re utterly, desperately serious about it and we’re trying to interpret it to the people we represent who in our states desperately need it. We’re precluded from doing so by these types of tactics.”

“We’re still struggling in the Finance Committee, and that’s okay, because one thing that I’m very certain about is that we’re going to have a health care bill...and we’re going to have it by the end of this year,” he added.